magiadoreal

‘The Monogram Murders,’ Sophie Hannah’s Poirot Mystery Nobody would dispute the fact that Hercule Poirot, the elegant Belgian detective, he of the patent-leather shoes and the waxed mustache, is dead. Agatha Christie brought him to an end in her appropriately named novel, “Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case,” and The New York Times itself marked his death with a fictional obituary. But the demise of the hero, and of the author, no longer needs to be the end of the story. The literary executors of James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, have held this view for some years, and there seems to be no end to the public’s enthusiasm for rewritten versions of a whole host of literary favorites. Continue reading the main story The purists, of course, shake their heads in disapproval, arguing that fictional characters are the product of a particular imagination and should not be endlessly reimagined by later generations of authors. Others, while not objecting in principle, believe writers...